NEWSROUND
Padraig Pearse
Easter
James Connolly tydom , believed that Britain ’ s difficulty was Ireland ’ s opportunity .
Thus did several hundred poorly armed insurrectionists , plus the 300 trade unionists of Connolly ’ s Citizen Army , occupy Dublin and take the might of the British empire .
Despite the distraction of blood-soaked fields of Flanders few of the ring-leaders thought they could actually prevail . And public opinion throughout Ireland was aghast at such an armed rebellion in Ireland . The rising had virtually no public support .
Most of the leaders of the uprising were executed after the five-day jacquerie was crushed ferociously , British Navy gunboats reducing the centre of Dublin to rubble .
But the British Empire ’ s love affair with dawn firing squads backfired when they summarily executed the 16 leaders of the Easter Rising , one of them , Connolly in a wheelchair . Their remains were buried in quicklime in Kilmainham jail .
Casement was indicted for high treason at the Old Bailey and sentenced to death by hanging at Pentonville prison on August 3rd . Forgotten were his seminal reports of mass murder and enslavement of indigenous peoples by the imperial powers .
Casement ’ s Congo report of 1903 detailed appalling atrocities carried out by the armies of Leopold II , King of “ plucky little Catholic Belgium ” to whose aid Britain had come when the Germans invaded in 1914 .
The mass executions after secret trials by courts martial caused widespread
outrage across Ireland . Even the Catholic Church swung decisively to the cause of Irish nationalism .
And the incarceration of another 500 insurrectionist prisoners in mainland concentration camps did little to assuage opinion as the public mood changed .
Among the internees was Michael Collins , and on their release six months later , these Volunteers were to become the core of the Irish Republican Army which was to launch a guerrilla war after the nationalists ’ landslide victory at the 1918 general election .
Romantic Ireland ’ s dead and gone , it ’ s with O ’ Leary in the grave
“ The Easter 1916 commemoration this year was notable for the fact that the government and Irish people were determined it be a commemoration , and not celebration , “ said Dr Brendan Fleming , Lecturer in English and Honorary Senior Fellow at the University of Buckingham .
“ In a way not seen before , substantial attention was given to the civilians and British soldiers who died . Renewed attention from historians and the wider Irish population has encouraged a reassessment of this foundational event .
“ The coincidence with the centenary of the Battle of the Somme has also prompted a reinterpretation of the Easter Rising within the wider context of world war .”
Since the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 , the democratic method has taken precedence in Republican campaigns . Cathal Burgha , the grandson of the Irish rebel of the same name , rejects the idea that the IRA had a “ mandate from history ” to continue violent pursuit of their aims .
Personifying the newfound Republican acquiescence , Gerry Adams , the President of Sinn Fein now tweets about his favourite coffee and squirrels chasing cats - a considerably different tone to holding the entire country ransom at gunpoint .
So what happened to the promises of equal rights and opportunity set out in the proclamation of the Irish Republic ?
The reality is that many in Ireland and on the Left in general still don ’ t consider the Good Friday agreement or the 1922 partitioning of the country to be legitimate . Because of this , the nationalist Republican dream of a united Ireland refuses to go away .
The Republic of Ireland today may be independent in name but its radical history won ’ t be bleached out and , some would say , the fundamental class nature of the Irish struggle is unfinished business .
As the poet W . B . Yeats said of the Easter Rising : “ Romantic Ireland ’ s dead and gone , it ’ s with O ’ Leary in the grave .”